My aim is to offer insights into some of the more subtle principles underpinning prints. The commentary is based on thirty-eight years of teaching and the prints and other collectables that I am focusing on are those which I have acquired over the years.
In the galleries of prints (accessed by clicking the links immediately below) I am also adding fresh images offered for sale. If you get lost in the maze of links, simply click the "home" button to return to the blog discussions.

Condition: richly inked lifetime impression trimmed along the
platemark. The sheet has numerous minor restorations, including a replenished
tip to the lower-right corner, traces of coloured pigment and light staining.

I am selling this very small but exquisitely rendered engraving by
one of the famous German Little Masters —the shared interest of the group in executing
little prints is exemplified by this postage-stamp sized masterpiece—for the
total cost of AU$400 (currently US$317.13/EUR266.40/GBP245.43 at the time of
this listing) including postage and handling to anywhere in the world.

If you are interested in purchasing this precious print from the
mid-1500s, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will send
you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

This print has been sold

This is the first engraving
in Pencz’s series addressing the Renaissance ideal of a “proper” education
titled, “The Seven Liberal Arts.” Based on my understanding of the Renaissance
vision of a good curriculum offered by Jeffrey Chipps Smith (2014) in
“Nuremberg, a Renaissance City, 1500–1618” (University of Texas Press), there
are two fundamental components and this print, “Grammar”—the first plate in the
series—is linked with “Dialectic” and “Rhetoric”—Plates 2 and 3 in the series—in
what is termed the “trivum”, the first key component of a sound approach to
education. This triumvirate of pedagogical constructs helps to shape the skills
of clear communication. The second key component to learning, termed the “quadrivium”
embraces the remaining plates in the series: “Arithmetic”, “Music”, “Geometry”
and “Astrology”—Plates 4 to 7. This latter group, as the names suggest, gives
the conceptual “meat” and direction to what is studied.

(Note: this explanation may be flawed and I may have profoundly
misunderstood the logic behind medieval and Renaissance learning as discussed
by Jeffery Chipps Smith.)